August 7, 2012

RTL-SDR Current Measurement

I was curious to know how much power the RTL-SDR (RTL2832 and E4000)
dongle required since the setup in my previous post with an MK802 has
limited ability to power USB devices. I modified an hub to break the Vcc
line so that I could hook up an multimeter. With the dongle inserted
and no software running it showed ~100mA. Running rtl_test with varying
sample rate from 1 to 3 MSPS resulted in 180-190mA.